Toro Y Moi isn’t exactly the first artist you would imagine releasing a live album recorded in the middle of a desert. His catalog, now seven albums deep, evolved from an intimate version of bedroom-pop that was one of the foundations of chillwave, through 2015’s What For?, an uneven pastiche of guitar rock informed by ’70s adult contemporary as much as it was by Weezer. (There’s even a rap-influenced mixtape in there somewhere.)
A “live album from Toro Y Moi” makes sense, then, when you consider Live from Trona wasn’t recorded from an actual concert or festival appearance: rather, the show was performed in front of no one, amidst the beautiful landscape of Trona—three hours away from Los Angeles and a town home to about 3,000—the perfect showcase for a set of Bundick’s laidback tunes.
Still, how does the beatmaker and songwriter translate live? In a live club setting, it works, because small, indoor venues amplify his layered, dense rhythms that propel his post-2011 output (and accentuate his penchant for catchy, striking riffs). But how does it work from the middle of a canyon? Bundick circumvents this by crafting a set that mostly sticks to the guitar-laden What For?.
This accomplishes a few things: it gives those songs, from an album that didn’t crack the critical accolades of his previous work and was mostly seen as a mild disappointment, a second life. It also fleshes them out in the way only a live performance can. What For’s biggest problem was it didn’t rock: while his demo June 2009, re-released in 2012, also didn’t rock, it was more of a power-pop record, an early recording that made its sins easy to forgive. What For’s smooth adult contemporary sound was five years after “Round and Round” and felt regressive after Bundick created his most dense, funkiest, and obviously Dilla-inspired record with 2013’s sublime Anything in Return.
It’s easy to enjoy Live from Trona as a What For? Part Deux, then, which is to Bundick’s benefit, as his catalog is pretty much bulletproof, with that album his most obvious weak link. Seven of those songs appear here, and they serve as the record’s best run as they sound the most appropriate in the desert. “Still Sound,” a stellar track and stand-out from 2011’s Underneath the Pine, feels limp and exposed live, its crunchy guitar riff in the studio withering outdoors, like a high-res photograph that’s been compressed. (“Say That” escapes mostly unscathed.) This is unfortunately a pitfall of Bundick’s music—if you remove the studio-enhanced sheen, the nostalgic production touches that give his best albums (Underneath the Pine, the Freaking Out EP, Anything in Return) their unique aura—is this some great, unheard, funky Todd Rundgren album?—you’re left with something tepid, like What For?.
The record’s lone new song, “JBS,” featuring jazz duo Mattson 2, has some inspired jamming, but at six-and-a-half minutes, is too long. It’s the kind of thing that might have sounded fantastic if you were there (ironic, considering no one was), but loses its immediacy in recorded form. It’s also the album’s most dangerous turn into self-indulgence, which, to its credit, Live from Trona successfully avoids. The set closes with What For’s pensive closer, “Yeah Right,” which reads likes an artistic statement; it’s a Dear John letter to chillwave. “Who are your new friends? Why did you bring them?” is a subtly devastating line, the kind of thing that stings the most when you resent someone closest to you, and the song, stretched to seven minutes to cap the live set, hits even harder in this version. It feels like Bundick, who will turn 30 in November, is closing the door on the youth-oriented movement he helped ignite back in 2010.
Few live albums are truly essential, and Live from Trona isn’t, either. But by tackling some of his least-loved songs head-on as the centerpiece of this record, Bundick shows a continued willingness to tinker with his work until he’s completely satisfied with the final product, which has been a hallmark of his career. Live from Trona also asks you to consider Bundick’s artistic output as a whole: by exploring sounds we never would have expected to hear from him in 2010, he’s continually evolving. The album leaves you wondering what his next pivot could be.
